North Platte, Nebraska

North Platte is a city in and the county seat of Lincoln County, Nebraska, United States. It is located in the southwestern part of the state, along Interstate 80, at the confluence of the North and South Platte Rivers forming the Platte River. The population was 24,733 at the 2010 census.

North Platte is a railroad town; Union Pacific Railroad's large Bailey Yard is located within the city. Today, North Platte is served only by freight trains, but during World War II the city was famous for the North Platte Canteen. Tens of thousands of volunteers from North Platte and surrounding towns met the troop trains passing through North Platte, offering coffee, sandwiches and hospitality.

North Platte is the principal city of the North Platte Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Lincoln, Logan, and McPherson counties.

History

North Platte was established in 1868 when the Union Pacific Railroad was extended to that point. It was named from the North Platte River.

Geography

Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad (reporting mark UP) is a Class I line haul freight railroad that operates nearly 8,500 locomotives over 32,000 route-miles in 23 states west of Chicago, Illinois and New Orleans, Louisiana. The Union Pacific Railroad network is the largest in the United States and is serviced by more than 47,000 employees.

Union Pacific Railroad is the principal operating company of Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE: UNP); both are headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Over the years Union Pacific Corporation has grown by acquiring other railroads, notably the Missouri Pacific, Chicago & North Western, Western Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas, and the Southern Pacific (including the Denver & Rio Grande Western).

Union Pacific Corporation's main competitor is the BNSF Railway, the nation's second largest freight railroad, which also primarily services the Continental U.S. west of the Mississippi River. Together, the two railroads have a duopoly on all transcontinental freight rail lines in the U.S.

North

North is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. North is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west.

Etymology

The word north is related to the Old High German nord, both descending from the Proto-Indo-European unit ner-, meaning "down" (or "under"). (Presumably a natural primitive description of its concept is "to the left of the rising sun".)

The Latin word borealis comes from the Greek boreas "north wind, north", which, according to Ovid, was personified as the son of the river-god Strymon, the father of Calais and Zetes. Septentrionalis is from septentriones, "the seven plow oxen", a name of Ursa Maior. The Greek arktikos is named for the same constellation, and is the derivation of the English word "Arctic".

Other languages have sometimes more interesting derivations. For example, in Lezgian, kefer can mean both 'disbelief' and 'north', since to the north of the Muslim Lezgian homeland there are areas formerly inhabited by non-Muslim Caucasian and Turkic peoples. In many languages of Mesoamerica, "north" also means "up". In Hungarian the word for north is észak, which is derived from éjszaka ("night"), since above the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun never shines from the north.

Overland Route

Overland Route or Overland Trail refers to the following travel routes:

Overland Trail is also a generic term for a number of wagon trails during the 19th century in the western United States:

Train

A train is a form of rail transport consisting of a series of vehicles that usually runs along a rail track to transport cargo or passengers. Motive power is provided by a separate locomotive or individual motors in self-propelled multiple units. Although historically steam propulsion dominated, the most common modern forms are diesel and electric locomotives, the latter supplied by overhead wires or additional rails. Other energy sources include horses, engine or water-driven rope or wire winch, gravity, pneumatics, batteries, and gas turbines. Train tracks usually consist of two running rails, sometimes supplemented by additional rails such as electric conducting rails and rack rails, with a limited number of monorails and maglev guideways in the mix. The word 'train' comes from the Old French trahiner, from the Latin trahere 'pull, draw'.

There are various types of trains that are designed for particular purposes. A train may consist of a combination of one or more locomotives and attached railroad cars, or a self-propelled multiple unit (or occasionally a single or articulated powered coach, called a railcar). The first trains were rope-hauled, gravity powered or pulled by horses. From the early 19th century almost all were powered by steam locomotives. From the 1910s onwards the steam locomotives began to be replaced by less labor-intensive and cleaner (but more complex and expensive) diesel locomotives and electric locomotives, while at about the same time self-propelled multiple unit vehicles of either power system became much more common in passenger service.